Learning Strategies

On the whole I recommend Daddy’s Girl, by Lisa Scottoline. Formally it’s a mystery, but it’s mostly about families. Like many mysteries, it also carries a theme of law vs. justice, and Scottoline does an effective job of exploring this issue. Her protagonist’s relationships with her brother and her boyfriend are annoying, especially with the loud brother who talks in all caps — actually I listened to the audiobook version, so the caps were converted to shouting, as the author presumably intended, but I still kept wishing that Natalie would tell him to shut up. My other reservation was the implausible plot. But these deficiencies are outweighed by the convincing portrayal of the academic setting at Penn Law School and of Natalie’s large Italian family — perhaps similar to Scottoline’s? Who knows? Anyway, it’s certainly not the best mystery of the year, but it’s worth reading.

Labels: books